Re: Emergency braking and bird anatomy [was: Re: DVD copying and CSS]
On Tue, Feb 24, 2004 at 09:51:12AM -0800, Paul Johnson wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 24, 2004 at 08:53:43AM -0700, Monique Y. Herman wrote:
> > > Its actually wrong also for bicycles. If you skid it takes a much
> > > longer time to stop. Another thing a lot of casual cyclists don't
> > > know is that you actually should stop mostly with the front brake
> > > (which is much much more effective). You just need to make sure to
> > > hold yourself in place with your hands not to go over the handlebar.
> > > You do that and you won't flip.
> >
> > Maybe you should take that opinion to alt.mountain-bike. When you have
> > a good bike with strong brakes, you won't just throw yourself over the
> > handlebars; you'll flip the whole damn bike, especially when you're
> > going downhill.
>
> Oh, I missed that the first time...got lost trying to find context in
> the poor quoting.
>
> That's hilarious! I ride pretty often, and I almost never use my
> front brake. Only if it's raining do I move to the front brake, and
> even then, I don't go more than 50/50 front/back. Go ahead and do an
> e-stop on only your front brake. Let me know how much farther you go
> than the bike. Hint: How do you think the guy launched himself off
> the mountain bike in that chocolate milk commercial?
>
I have no idea how this thread came to be, and alt.mountain-bike is a
better place for it (although this is also true for road bikes), but
just for the record (forgive me for being too wordy ;-)
The myth about not touching your front break or you will a spectacular
endo over your handle bar is a nice folk tale but almost completely
wrong. Doing an endo depends on how well you use your hands to keep
yourself in the right place and take your weight a bit back when
needed. It all a matter of control. My girlfriend thought so too until
I convinced her to start using the front break and now that she does it
properly she is going several times faster since she's got the
confidence she can actually stop when she needs to.
I have done quite a few emergency breaks going at over 30Mph using only
the front breaks and the only time I did an endo due to front breaks in
the last few years was because I accidentally locked the front break
going of a 2 foot drop at the wrong speed, and I have very good breaks
(they are not discs, but the older XTs are some of the best V breaks
around).
Using the front break I can stop on a dime from 30Mph, using the rear I
will be somewhere down the road glued to a wall probably.
As for which break to use, it depends on the terrain and whether you are
turning or not. Nice hard ground like rock or road you want to use
mostly your front break, something like 70/30 or 80/20 in favor. The
more slippery the more you need to feather the breaks and use more of
the rear break since you can recover from skidding your rear wheel, its
almost impossible to recover from skidding your front. On the other
hand you need to ease up on the front break going into turns since the
wheel is using most of its traction staying in the turn (breaking in
turns is a tricky business with any vehicle, including cars).
As for down hill, I ride quite a bit of free ride, not so much downhill
since unfortunately I don't have the money for the big hit bikes, but
the steeper the terrain the more I use the front break since the rear
wheel has almost no traction on steep terrain.
To see all this you can look at the older down hill and free ride bikes,
before disc breaks were this popular. They usually had a front disc
break and a rear V break since the rear break can't use as much power
before skidding. Also small motorcycles and standard cars usually have a
front disk break and a rear drum, and large motorcycles have a single
disc break in the rear and a double disc break up front.
The reason for doing the endo isn't the front break actually. When you
break with the front break the bike puts more weight into the front
wheel which improves traction, this causes it to break harder then you
expect so your body goes forward. You do an endo only when the weight
is centered in front of the front wheel instead of behind it.
Try practicing your front break carefully, locking your elbows as a
start when you do it until you get the feeling. You will quickly see
the difference.
BTW, once you start to get good control you can start doing the really
fun stuff like lifting your rear wheel and driving just on your front,
or doing a whip tail bringing your rear wheel around in tight
switchbacks, etc.
> > That being said, skidding is a bad idea while mountain biking for two
> > reasons: one, you're out of control, and two, you're trashing the trail.
>
> Big time.
>
> --
> .''`. Paul Johnson <baloo@ursine.ca>
> : :' : http://ursine.ca/
> `. `'` proud Debian admin and user
> `- Debian. Because it *must* work.
>
>
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